Buddhism and Life

It is eleven o'clock at night and I have had to get out of bed to write this. I say, "have to" because I feel compelled or impelled or something. Driven anyway. The latest NCF arrived today and I looked, or more accurately, glanced through it. John was asking how we do our Buddhism in our lives. How we translate our practice into our life. Buddhism has seemed to be a series of translations or "transmogrifications" to me.

I read the theory; Zen, Dzogchen, Lam Rim, Lojong and Chan and I "sat" periodically. I went on retreat. The retreats' extended periods of sitting allowed a translation of the theory into practice. Translation: making something understandable in another format. Oh! So that was what they meant! From the retreat "sitting" changed. Now I was saddled with retrospection; an examination of the minutiae of past events. This was not Tsan, an investigation of the present mind, but a white shirt stained with red wine of longing for repetition and collars and cuffs grubby with the dust, sweat and grease of working hard to make spurious "progress".

I took my Buddhism terribly seriously. This was my "Great Game". I surrounded myself with others who were similarly driven. We would meet, eat and sit and talk about it all. We visited teachers and centres, monasteries and teachings. We chanted in various languages and prostrated in several modes. We bowed and gazed and listened and sat. Above all, we sat. Ash from hundreds of incense sticks filled censors and atmospheres.

The more I did this, the less I understood. How did any of this translate into general life in the West? I got my feet caught in the seaweed cathedrals of "practising properly" and I didn't care if I drowned. Or at least, felt that I ought not to care.

So. What constituted "doing it properly"? Several monastics suggested that devoting one's life to practice was the only option unless I wanted to wait until another lifetime appeared. There is something appealing about retiring from the world and its distractions and being in a position to concentrate fully on practice with other similarly minded beings. This has been an option to which I have given serious consideration. Scarily serious consideration.

Then I was surrounded by people going off on year-long retreats and rains retreats in far-off places where I cannot even read the script. And I wanted to go too. This despite Dogen's admonitions about travelling to far-off dusty places. My friends were shaving their heads and taking robes.

Recently, my best friend and Dharma sister took vows and robes and lost her hair. She now has a new name, no home and a new land. She is on the other side of the globe. She wears grey, gets up at three, has no privacy, lives up in the mountains and follows 238 rules every day to the best of her abilities. She is living her practice.

And me? Well, who am I? What is a Dharma sister when you have no contact? What am I? What is this label "Buddhist"? An old man asked me recently whether I told people that I was a Buddhist. I replied that I told them if they asked, but didn't offer the information on first meeting. "Hello, my name is X and I'm a Buddhist", sounds like a mixture of a 12 Step programme and "coming out". But what does it mean? How does it impinge on daily life? Could anyone tell? Can one Buddhist spot another across the aisles at Sainsbury's?

Am I still being a Buddhist if I discard some aspect of the precepts by, for example, indulging in my penchant for red wine? If I drink it mindfully, completely aware that I am actively choosing to ignore Shifu's advice about complete abstinence, is that less 'bad' than drinking it without thinking or noticing? Which has the fewer karmic implications? Is my motivation a determining factor? If I do it to keep my relationship with non-Buddhist friends intact, is that worse? Is being a separatist prude 'better'? Ryokan drank sake with farmers regularly and exchanged poetry with painted ladies. Now I know that I am no Ryokan. I may be deluded, but I'm not that deluded! There has to be a way of being in this world of mass communications and consumerism that balances idealism with reality.

The balance is precarious and I oftentimes lose body awareness and slip gracelessly off the tightrope and into the mud. John talks about stepping off a thousand-foot pole, which is terrifying for a person of vertigo like myself, even though I know that the wings of compassion and wisdom will allow me to glide effortlessly through the landscape on a thermal. But mostly, I am neither wise, nor compassionate. Mostly I am a frightened, anxious, angry, chip carrying, ego-driven ball of desires. And it's hard to fly when you're carrying that lot. But there are times, even at work, even in the midst of relationships when I remember to put it down.

Professionally, these are the moments when that difficult person ceases to be "other" and simple open-heartedness is present, allowing an expansion that encompasses both. It can be remembering to breathe consciously before putting finger to keyboard. Or hearing the scratch of nib on paper or the taste of tea on tongue. It is giving bad news simply and directly without embellishments or embarrassment and being open to hold what emerges. It is seeing beauty in a buddlia flowering incongruously out of an abandoned chimney pot. Or the red swish of an urban fox grinning across a desolate wasteland of city decay. It is smiling towards the demented lady who asks you who you are (as if you know!), and wiping the dribble from her mouth without revulsion.

Personally it is silently singing Chenrezig's mantra as the phlebotomist struggles to get a cannula in your vein. It, "I", watching the rising tension as you wait for blood test results. Watching, rather than being controlled by the tension. It is feeling my friend's pain at the impending death of her pet companion. It is the shared experience of bliss at a friend's shrine. The orange surge of energetic warmth as the sun rises and that bright disk enters the third eye and works hormonal magic on the pineal gland. It is the blending of internal and external ecstasy as the radiance of a thousand bluebells shimmers in the mind, in the heart in the atmospheric light of the glen and from the cells of each individual petal and sepal. It is the image of elves and fairies shaking blue love dust into the shafts of sunlight to make your breath catch and your eyes to open. It is the sound of the stream without interference and the stretch of the gong-sound.

The translation here is of the ordinary into the noticed, the repressed into the uninhibited, the self into others. This world, this space, this time is what there is. Wanting it to be otherwise is fruitless. I am a woman of middle age in the first world, Northern Hemisphere. I am. This is. Not fighting it. Not wishing. Allowing. Being can be resting.

That is my Buddhism.